Prosocial behavior and gender.

Fundamentos del Análisis Económico and BRiDGE, University of the Basque Country Bilbao, Spain.

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Fundamentos del Análisis Económico and BRiDGE, University of the Basque Country Bilbao, Spain ; CERGE-EI, A Joint Workplace of Charles University in Prague and the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Prague, Czech Republic.

Abstract

This study revisits different experimental data sets that explore social behavior in economic games and uncovers that many treatment effects may be gender-specific. In general, men and women do not differ in "neutral" baselines. However, we find that social framing tends to reinforce prosocial behavior in women but not men, whereas encouraging reflection decreases the prosociality of males but not females. The treatment effects are sometimes statistically different across genders and sometimes not but never go in the opposite direction. These findings suggest that (i) the social behavior of both sexes is malleable but each gender responds to different aspects of the social context; and (ii) gender differences observed in some studies might be the result of particular features of the experimental design. Our results contribute to the literature on prosocial behavior and may improve our understanding of the origins of human prosociality. We discuss the possible link between the observed differential treatment effects across genders and the differing male and female brain network connectivity, documented in recent neural studies.

Giving in the DG under two frames: Recipients are either not informed where the money comes from or informed that it comes from a game. The condition was known by the Dictator (Dreber et al., ). Women seem to react more to the treatment effect, but the effects are never significant.

The acceptance rate of all proposals by Responders in the Ultimatum Game (UG) for the Delay and No Delay treatments (Grimm and Mengel, ), disaggregated by gender. The treatment effect is only significant for males, independently of whether we consider all or only low proposals.

The acceptance rate of proposals by Responders in the Ultimatum Game (UG) for the no delay and change treatments (Grimm and Mengel, ), disaggregated by gender. The treatment effect is only significant for males and robust to considering low offers.

Giving in the Dictator Game by the same subjects in 2010 and 1 year later (Brañas-Garza et al., ), disaggregated by gender. Even though both genders decrease significantly their giving, men adjust their behavior more than women.

Average contribution in the Public Good Game (PGG) under three differing conditions. Time Pressure, Benchmark (without any time restriction), and Time Delay (Rand et al., ). Left: only subjects obeying the time constraint; Right: all subjects.

Average percentage contribution in the PGG under three differing conditions: Intuition Priming, neither intuition nor reflection are enhanced (Benchmark), and Reflection Priming (Rand et al., 2010). No gender is affected by Priming Intuition; only men react to Reflection Priming significantly decreasing their contributions.